Is Microsoft Buying Epic?

AlienLion writes:
Let us take a quick look at Epic Games and what has been happening there, because it almost seems like something stinky might be brewing behind the closed windows and doors. Of course, the big news today is that the president of the company, Mike Capps is stepping down after a decade of service. That is not that remarkable in itself, if you are not aware that there have been suspiciously many such moves from Epic, as of late.

Anyway, this article is pretty pointless and conspirative: when a company buys another company, the first thing they sign is that key talent must stay on board for a certain period of time. Otherwise they are simply risking buying an empty shell of a company since everyone can leave at once. Key people leaving Epic now is actually an indication this is not going to happen.

Not to mention: Epic's bread and butter is the Unreal Engine itself being licensed to almost every major studio and even indie devs. What would become of this source of revenue once MS acquires them? This engine is the top engine in the industry because it scales from consoles to iphones, and once it becomes exclusive to a certain platform most studios will drop it. This simply doesn't make any sense.

Not to mentioned the hilarious biased point of view of the writer: "Barely a month ago, another big name left the company in Cliff Bleszinski. As hugely annoying as that dude could be, he created some decent waves in the industry, on occasion..." Just LMAO at "Decent waves of games, on occasions". Way to understate the contribution of someone who's responsible for award winning series from Jazz Jackrabbit, through Unreal Tournament to Gears of War. What's next? Claiming that "Shigeru Miyamoto made a a few games that don't suck here and there" perhaps?

i really hope NOT. Sony,MS and Nintendo should look to buyer the smaller studios and leave these billion dollar companies alone.

i rather have them spend $100 million on xblive and just hire bunch of smaller devs to work on xblive games.

Dlacy13g

get your facts straight MS killed Rare. and Until 343 studios work on something new you can never say MS proved anything. one thing i do give MS about 343 studios is how many top talent developers they hired for 343 studios.

In 2002, the company was wholly purchased by Microsoft and has since focused on developing games exclusively for Microsoft video game consoles. Rare since then has developed Kameo: Elements of Power, the Viva Piñata series, and the Kinect Sports series

see the difference? they use to make games than MS bought em and all the talent left and what was left work on crappy games and than even they left

there is a reason both sony and nintendo has so many studios yet being bought by MS is like a death sentence

Why do you think they were able to be bought so cheap. They were in the toilet. What was Rare's last hit? When MS bought them they churned out Perfect Dark Zero which was trash and it's been downhill since then. Donkey Kong Country and Golden Eye was the old Rare. MS didn't buy Rare when they were on top. They bought them when they were struggling. Looking at their body of work when the N64 was relevant shows how short minded you are. What did they do during the PS2/Xbox generation? Of course MS is going to buy the company for the license of the Unreal Engine. Do you really think it's just for the game development? They are looking at the bigger picture. Games can flop and could turn out to be a loss, but that same crappy game is running on an engine. That's where the money is. Why open a restaurant or bar when 75% of them fail when you can sell the equipment they need to operate.

cee773-You are a shallow thinker and would never make it in business. Thinking they would buy a company for Gears is retarded. They already have that locked down, so why buy the company? IPs, Copyrights, and Trademarks are worth more you idiot. They would own the #1 game development engine in the world. The engine alone could sell for 15 million to a developer....DUH, small eyes

If MS really wanted Gears alone, they could easily just lock it down with a contract like they already have with Gears 1-3 and now Judgement.

A game can flop, making the IP pretty worthless (not literally). Now buying expertise and technology is a whole other set of questions, but then again I don't see why a company like MS would have any problems creating a game engine that rivals Unreal.

They already created a fantastic engine for Halo 4 with 343 Industries.

Please do research before you post the same regurgitated statements that ignorant fanboys post.

Rare was basically a shovelware developer for the NES in the 1980's, they put out over 50 games, mostly licensed properties like Sesame Street and Nightmare On Elm Street. They had mass turnover because of working conditions.

Eventually they made some quality games, but the team that built GoldenEye on the N64 was actually a brand new side division of Rare whose members had never made a game before. The core of Rare at that time was working on other projects.

There were mass quitting again shortly after Banjo Kazooie was released. Rare has made some great games, but they have gone through a ton of turnovers and have had their fair share of troubles and flops. I've enjoyed a lot of what they've done, but don't list a game like Conker, which was released on N64 and flopped, Microsoft gave that IP a chance and it flopped again, selling less than 50k.

Killer Instinct was good, but the second one flopped as well. Not every game that is well made sells well.

On the topic of Epic, I could see Microsoft buying them, for one thing it would be a constant source of income because of the licensing rights to the Unreal Engine.

As for 343i, they are specifically a Halo developer, that is Microsot's killer app and 343i was built to work on those games. They aren't going to be making anything else. Its the Reclaimer Trilogy that they are working on for the foreseeable future.

Cliffy B always said he wants Gears on other platforms but as long as M$ is good to them(MONEY!!!) they won't do that but other projects could be realized on other platforms.

This is why Cliffy B probably wanted to leave and go Multiplat. He maybe wants to try his skills on an other crowd of gamers and we all know this is only possible with the Sony Community cause they don't only play Shooters.

@ Domination:I looked at that Wikipedia list.First, lets count studios that actually make games. Microsoft has 343, turn ten , twisted pixel, Xbox live productions, lionhead and rare. That is 7 studios. All those others listed only make kinekt games. Some of these studios listed here only make 1 game and some of these studios only make downloadable games. If we ignore those Microsoft is left with ... nothing. But we all know Microsoft doesn't need to sell GAMES to succeed. It has a different business model. XBOX Live.

You can't be so picky. I was questioned on how many studios MS has and I provided the evidence. Yes, some have made kinect games but who cares? They are still first party and still count.

By your logic does that mean we don't count SCE London for Sony? Because all they've done it make Singstar and Buzz games or crappy move only games? Do we not include Team Ico because they haven't even made a game this gen? Of course not, that would be ridiculous.

Sony have some incredible first party studios but they have ditched a few recently.. and MS are certainly trying to fix one of the biggest and fairest criticisms aimed at them over recent years. They have a LOT of games in development, exclusively for their next console. Now lets see if they will make good games :)

Please NO! MS have destroyed every games company they have bought in the past bar bungie who only managed to not fall apart thanks to not being 100% MS owned. Look at what happened to RARE for example once a huge name in the gaming world and now a 2nd rate developer that nobody looks forward to their next release. EPIC needs to stay independent for that reason. Ms should take a leaf from Sonys book on how to handle studios when taken over.

What type of stuff was rare putting out when MS bought them? It was my understanding that rare was starting to struggle which is why they sold up. Rare started to slip further into decline in in terms of quality well before the buyout, i dont understand how some people can ignore such basic facts solely for the purpose of doing the old "MS is teh evilness studio killers" routine. Its getting old now. Not to mention that this whole thread is based purely on speculation so what we end up with is people bringing in half truths based on opinions about rare into an argument that is based purely on speculation and circumstance. Its crazy. What ever happened to waiting for the truth before we comment on it?

It won't happen. This is ridiculous speculation based on a shift in management and staff.

Epic makes the bulk of their money off Engine licences and they make A LOT. They wouldn't kill or jeopardize that cash cow by locking down their customer base, which MS would seek to do almost immediately.

As a PC gamer, not a big loss. I could live without an Unrel Tournament, Gears or a new Bulletstorm. Even if these franchises will come to PC, they'll support that mess of a client called GfWL which only benefit 360 gamers.

Halo, Forza and Fable are came over from last gen. These are MS's 1st party studios. Therefor they are giving the top selling core games to the core audience. Now that MS is ALSO giving casual games, everyone seems to think that suddenly MS only cares about casuals. It only makes practical sense that MS support their Kinect peripheral. MS have a MUCH larger library of 360 core games found on the 360 then they do casual games yet nobody wants to consider the ENTIRE 360 catalog. They would only rather focus on the current year.

It's just ignorant to think MS are only focusing on the casual market. Right now MS is preparing for their next gen console release which is why the only exclusive core game we know that is coming out next year is Gears of War Judgement. The 720 and the starting game launch for it will be released 4th quarter of 2013.

Bottom line, regardless of what many on this site like to imagine, MS are still pushing their top selling exclusive franchises. Forza Horizon just released and Halo 4. MS also gets timed exclusive DLC for the largest franchise on the market as well....the COD franchise.

The 360 is still just as much of a core system as it is a casual system. It's got something for everyone.

The bigger question would be, what would MS gain by buying out Epic? While they certainly do have some killer IP's under their belt, outside of Unreal, GOW, and maybe Infinity Blade, most of their games aren't as well known.

Epic's biggest asset is their Unreal Engine. Much of it's popularity is due to the fact that it's powerful and multi-platform. Unless MS would keep it multi-plat it's hard to see the engine staying a major contender in the market, especially since publishers are now making their own powerful multi-plat engines (Frostbite, Luminous, Fox, etc).

Buying out a company only to reduce it's worth doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. If many of the key players from Epic are leaving, then they'd just be buying the name, which unfortunately is nowhere near the value of the company as it is now. If MS is buying it to get exclusive rights to Unreal Engine, then why would they do that. They could produce their own engine for a fraction of the cost. Hate of Love MS, they have some of the best software engineers in their company, and for the most part they do understand pipeline development and usability.

People leaving Epic sounds like a buyout is likely than not. The signs are there.

M$ needs a vast portfolio of new brands, this is it. But that also means Unreal will no longer be multiplatform.

Microsoft has a keen habit of taking "not-known" names into cult icons. Just like Halo before MS bought it.

Oh, and that Unreal Engine? Most likely they want that so that M$ wouldn't have to spend an extra few billions into development of new SDK's. As they do with each Halo title released, or each Forza title released, etc. etc.

However key players in the company are leaving, which is not usually the case before a big buyout occurs. They would stay on because of the big payout they would receive in the transaction. The only reason, if a buyout were true, that they might leave is that MS would have a clause that they'd have to stay on for a while. If true, then they may not approve of the direction that MS would want to take with the company, which is why they are now leaving.

Also, a few billion to develop an engine? That's a gross over-estimation of what it takes to create an engine. If that were the case you wouldn't see all these publishers making their own engines to use, and Epic would not be making money off their engine licenses. I can also assure you that Halo's development budget was not in the billions.

MS is very well equipped to make their own engine if they so desired. They've been making programming tools for longer than most of us have been alive. Not only do they have Visual Studio which could serve as a base, they also have XNA which in itself is a type of game engine. Adding a pipeline development layer for the developer (like you see in most game engines like UE or Unity), would not be that big a deal for them.

Honestly I see these key players leaving as a sign of something else. It's possible they want to do something different. It's not unthinkable that they may be looking at creating their own studio, or they have offers to go work with other big players in the market and they are just biding their time until their non-compete contracts run out.

This would be a big buy for MS since they basically have zero top notch first party Dev teams.

except, I'm pretty sure Epic has been pretty vocal about their dislike of the closed source system MS uses on the xbox. (see unreal tournaments map packs and mod system) So i'm not entirely sure that they'd go through with selling out completely.

Sony destroyed Zipper how? They didn't do no such thing they still released plenty of games for PS3 unlike RARE. They just couldn't keep up with current gen. Zipper wasn't that great anyway. Finally Sony got sick of them losing money and pulled them. Sony did well to stick with them so long.

@lelo2play yeah, sony really killed zipper. Look at all the games zipper made before they were part of sony (sarcasm)

And at least they "died" with the game that made them who they were (Socom) and not psMove only games and avatars. That was a noble quick "death" not the slow and humilliating that Rare has being trough

MS didnt kill Rare. Rare was DOA when they got to MS. Most if the top talent had already left Rare. MS has shown they can build a top tier studio. .. 343i says hi. Regardless of this rumor something is definitely up at Epic.

Please don't pull **** out of your *** and state it as fact. Rare was doing great at the time of acquisition and most of the key figures didn't leave until after the acquisition, including the founders (Stamper brothers). Hollis himself stated that Microsoft was very ham fisted in its' management of Rare. First there was lack of management and then there was a mess that made a several key people leave.

343 took over one of the biggest series ever and made a brilliant game true to the franchise's roots... they didn't "copy and paste".

If MS did acquire EPIC (which I highly doubt will happen), as long as MS treats them like 343 and hands them a blank check and says "Make the best damn Gears (or whatever) game possible", then it would be a good merger for fans.

let's not lie now. Lightbox Interactive, Eat Sleep Play and Evolution Studios, are all alive and kicking. Sony gave Lightbox Interactive the green light to make a Warhawk sequel knowing very well it wouldn't sell much, but would add variety to the PS3.

Game Republic was never owned by Sony, they could have chose to reject Sony money and not make exclusive Sony titles.

the only studio that didn't deserve the cut was Studio Liverpool. that was a huge mistake by Sony. everyone else deserved the boot.

With what making Kinect games? Last I heard a Kinect for Gears Of War was scrapped and was never gonna work.

If MS bought Epic they would put them hard at work. By creating new Ips for them, and expanding current franchises like Gears, BulletStorm, Unreal, and Shadow Complex 2. Think about it, MS could have a new Ip every year if they wanted, if they bought epic.

who is this "among others" you've listed? and yeah..Zipper tried some new things and it just didn't work. When you have other studios producing top quality games, why keep one that's a Ps2 success around?

they could've handled it a bit better from some of the reports I've read, but when it comes down to it, its a business about making money. Zipper wasn't making it happen.

it would be an industry shaking move, would that affect who could and couldn't have licensing of the unreal engine? i think it would be a strong decision for xbox and microsoft but may hurt gaming as a whole and i don't think epic would end up as rare. microsoft sort of kept rare alive but didn't use them well which ultimately ended the company, epic on the other hand has software, games, and established ip's that sell well acrooss all platforms, it'd be hard to take down a company like that, also microsoft had a great relationship with bungie which didn't end in its demise so i think epc and microsoft would do fine together.

Oh I don't know, man. Rare had quite a few massive games and established IP's. I think most forget just how revered and important the company once was. Plus, so many major figures leaving the company all of the sudden like a sinking ship? Something is up.